Chapter Three Orientation and Licensing of English Adverbs*

Chapter ThreeOrientation and Licensing of English Adverbs *3.1. Speaker’s Attitude and AdverbsA variety of linguistic expressions can be used to describe aspeaker’s attitude or mental state toward an event including anaction or a state. Most typical are adverbial expressions; for example,so-called evaluative adverbs, modal adverbs, performative adverbs,manner adverbs, and so on, which are realized as adverbs (singlewords or idiomatic phrases) as well as prepositional phrases,adverbial clauses and noun phrases. These types of adverbs conveythe speaker’s evaluation or judgment regarding events or theirdescriptions.Some examples will be given to show how adverbs can express aspeaker’s attitude or mental state toward an event. Evaluativeadverbs such as amazingly, fortunately, happily, surprisingly andunbelievably, which are also called factive adverbs, express the*This is a slightly revised version of the paper that was originallypublished in Tsukuba Review of English Studies No. 18, pp. 25-34, 1999.This is a part of my research in progress under the Special ResearchProject of the Typological Investigation of Languages and Cultures of theEast and West at University of Tsukuba. This work is also supported inpart by the 1998-2001 Grant of University of Tsukuba Research Projects(head: Shosuke Haraguchi & Hidekazu Suzuki). My deepest thanks go toNobuhiro Kaga for his encouragement, and Shosuke Haraguchi, HiromiOnozuka, Roger Martin and Takashi Yoshida for their valuable comments.

speaker’s evaluation of an event described in a sentence whenhe/she presupposes that it is true (or that its description is true), asshown below:(1) Fortunately I never had much homework.Modal adverbs such as admittedly, certainly, possibly, presumably andprobably, which are also called epistemic adverbs, express thespeaker’s estimation of probability or likelihood about the eventsdescribed, such as in the following: 1(2) Certainly, the meaning is clearer to anyone.Performative adverbs such as basically, bluntly, briefly, frankly, andgenerally, which are also called manner-of-speaking adverbs, are usedfor the expression of the way the speaker describes events insentences:(3) Basically, there are two approaches to the problem.Manner adverbs such as adequately, busily, carefully and slowly expresshow the speaker perceives actions in the past or present:, as shownbelow: 21Quirk et al. (1972, pp.511-520) call evaluative and modal adverbsattitudinal disjuncts, which "convey the speaker’s comment on the contentof what he is saying", as clear from the name.2Cobuild Grammar gives the following definition: You often want to saysomething about the manner or circumstances of an event or situation. Themost common way of doing this is by using adverbs of manner. Adverbs ofmanner give more information about the way in which an event or actiontakes place.42

Chapter ThreeOrientation and Licensing of English Adverbs(4) He turned back the pages very carefully.Degree adverbs such as absolutely, completely, greatly, slightly andtotally, which are sometimes called intensifiers, express the speaker’sestimation of the extent or degree of the events or their resultsdescribed in sentences; the extent or degree can be seen to be eithergreater or less than usual:(5) a. Our family’s horizons were expanded greatly.b. Food prices actually declined slightly.Some frequency adverbs have a similar characteristic in that they canbe involved in the speaker’s estimation. Frequency adverbs can beclassified to at least two subclasses: definite frequency adverbs suchas hourly, annually, twice and three times, and indefinite frequencyadverbs such as always, generally, often and sometimes (Quirk et al.1985, pp. 541-550):(6) a. Most teachers announce tests once or twice.b. The idea has so often been mentionedThe use of indefinite frequency adverbs depends on the speaker’sestimation of how often the event described in a sentence was (is orwill be) repeated, which is quite different from most cases of definitefrequency adverbs.Further, there are other kinds of adverbs, such as subjectadverbs and viewpoint adverbs, which have rather complicatedfunctions. Subject adverbs, such as deliberately, intentionally, sadly andstupidly, express how the speaker feels about the subject's state ofmind or intention in being in the state or doing the action which isdescribed in the sentence.43

(7) I deliberately misspelled some words.Viewpoint adverbs, such as artistically, economically, politically andtechnically, are used to state the point of view from which the speakerdescribes the event in the sentence.(8) Economically, the price of arms is becoming prohibitive.Viewpoint is not necessarily involved in the speaker's evaluation onan event or its description, but it clearly comes from a certain kind ofthe speaker's attitude with which he/she describes an event. Someconjunctive adverbs, such as accordingly, contrarily, moreover andhowever, can also be thought to be similar to these types of adverbs ina sense. They are used to connect the sentence in which they appearto the preceding sentence, as illustrated below:(9) Accordingly the request was grantedEven a logical connection can be made, at least in some cases, by thespeaker's judgment on how to describe an event or a series of events.These adverbs involved in the speaker’s evaluation are found tohave various kinds of functions in sentences, because the speaker canmake an evaluation or judgment on various aspects of events or theirdescriptions. For example, a conjunctive adverb is used to relate asentence in which it occurs to the sentence that it follows.Performative, evaluative and modal adverbs are associated with thewhole sentences or clauses, including embedded clauses, such ascomplement clauses and relative clauses, though the ways ofassociation differ depending on the type of adverbs. Subject adverbsare clearly related with the subject of a sentence. Manner adverbs areassociated with actions, but they are usually used to put a focus on44

Chapter ThreeOrientation and Licensing of English Adverbsprocesses (part of processes) and to describe them, so they are closelyrelated with the verb phrase (VP). Thus, in order to explore thefunctions or characteristics of adverbs, it is necessary to determinewhat aspect of an event the speaker evaluates and which element theadverb is associated with in a sentence.3.2. Kinds and Names of AdverbsI have referred to several kinds of adverbs: factive adverbs,modal adverbs, performative adverbs, manner adverbs, degreeadverbs, subject adverbs, viewpoint adverbs and conjunctiveadverbs. It is useful to ask what is meant by the names of the adverbswhen we try to make clear their functions or properties, eithersyntactic or semantic. Some of the names come from the (lexical orintrinsic) meanings which they express (e.g. manner, temporal,locative, degree adverbs and adverbs of means and instrument);some come from the roles or functions which they perform insentences (e.g. performative, viewpoint and conjunctive adverbs);others come from the names of the elements which they modify (e.g.subject adverbs).Let us first compare manner adverbs with performative adverbs,which can be used as follows:(10) a. The students spoke to me frankly. (manner)b. Frankly, they are not working so hard. (performative)The notion “manner” stands for the meaning which a word canexpress, in the same way as the notions of place, time, means andinstrument. Manner means “a way of doing something or the way inwhich a thing is done or happens” (American Heritage Dictionary) andmanner adverbs, as mentioned above, express how the speaker45

perceives an action. It is clear that performative adverbs also expressa kind of manner. 3 The difference between these two kinds ofadverbs lies in their roles or functions; that is, what element theymodify and how they do so. Manner adverbs modify the VP inwhich they appear, more specifically, “predicate verb +(which canbe null)”, while performative adverbs can be considered to modify aperformative verb which is usually not expressed explicitly butimplied in sentences. Performative adverbs have a sort ofperformative or illocutionary force in that they seem as if theymodify unexpressed performative verbs and compose a higherperformative predicate in a form of “performative verb +performative adverb”. Note here that performative adverbs look as ifthey modify unexpressed performative verbs as manner adverbs.Let us next consider a pair of manner adverbs and subjectadverbs, which can be used in (11):(11) a. Jim didn’t accept the award proudly. (manner)b. Proudly, Jim wouldn’t accept the award. (subject)Subject adverbs are, as mentioned above, adverbs that express thesubject's state of mind or intention in being in the state or doing theaction which is described in the sentence. There is some similaritybetween manner and subject adverbs, because the subject’s state ofmind or intention is easily reflected on how actions will be done orare being done. However, these two types of adverbs are differentfrom each other in that manner adverbs express how the actions arebeing done while subject adverbs convey the subject’s state of mind3It is probable for this reason that adverbs of this kind are also calledmanner-of-speaking adverbs.46

factive adverbs, can be used to express how the speaker evaluates theevents described in a sentence, with the presupposition that theyactually happened or will happen. Then, these two kinds of adverbsare similar in that they express states of events in some cases. It isimportant to note, however, that only some evaluative adverbs canbe used as manner adverbs, which is different from the case ofmanner and performative adverbs as well as manner and subjectadverbs. It should be noticed here that “evaluation” represents somekind of notion, not functions of linguistic expressions, just likemanner, place, time, instrument and others, and that the term ofevaluative adverb does not show how these adverbs work insentences. The class of evaluative adverbs usually consists of adverbswhich convey the speaker’s evaluation of an event and have scopeover the whole clause while manner adverbs have scope over VP.Hence evaluative adverbs are classified as sentence adverbs. 5Finally consider the case of modal adverbs, which can be used asfollows:(13) a. Probably that is a nice decision.b. Clearly there is a change of approach here.Modal adverbs are quite similar to evaluative adverbs in somerespects, especially in that the name given to these adverbs is basedon meaning, not on function. The notion of “modal” conveys thespeaker’s comment or judgement on the degree of possibility of the5Quirk et al. (1985, pp.612-631) call evaluative adverbs content disjunctsfrom the point of view of the function which they perform in sentences.This is different from Quirk et al. (1972), who call them attitudinal disjuncts,as mentioned above.48

Chapter ThreeOrientation and Licensing of English Adverbscontent of what he/she is saying. The term “modal adverb” is usedmore specifically; modal adverbs are adverbs that express themeaning just mentioned and have scope over the whole sentence,hence they are called sentence adverbs as well as evaluative adverbs.Notice that the speaker’s comment on the modality of possibility canbe given not only to the whole sentence but also to parts of asentence. Actually, modal adverbs can be used as a modifier ofadjectives and noun phrases (NPs), as shown in (14), which is alsotrue of other kinds of adverbs 6 :(14) a. This option is clearly preferable. 7b. This is a clearly preferable option.To sum up the above discussion, the names of adverbs do notnecessarily represent their uses. In fact, among the kinds of adverbsdiscussed above, only the name of “subject adverb” has to do withthe way adverbs of this class are used in a sentence while the namesof the other kinds of adverbs essentially have to do with their lexicalmeaning. Then, in order to make clear the characteristics of adverbs,it is essential to know the functions of adverbs in sentences, i.e., howadverbs can be used in sentences.6For example, consider (i) below, where exactly works as a modifier of theNP.(i) This is exactly the same option that I would like to take.7The occurrence of clearly in (14a) can be ambiguous in that it can beinterpreted either as a modifier of the adjective preferable or as a sentenceadverb.49

3.3. Determining the Licensing Domain of AdverbsI have shown in Section 1 that the speaker’s attitude orevaluation can be attributed to many aspects of an event described ina sentence and that a variety of expressions conveying the speaker’sattitude can be used in sentences. Thus various kinds of adverbsinvolved with the speaker’s attitude or evaluation can be used indifferent ways in sentences. I have also discussed in Section 2 the factthat the names of most adverbs 8 do not indicate their use, hence wehave to know how particular adverbs are used in sentences.Moreover, adverbs are often ambiguous in function, and therefore itis necessary but not sufficient to specify that an adverb at issue isassigned to more than one class of adverbs if it has a multiplefunction; we have further to determine how it is actually used in aparticular sentence. The uses or functions of adverbs have beenexplained in terms of “orientation” in Jackendoff (1972) and “scope”in Travis (1987) and Ernst (1998).Jackendoff (1972) suggests that some adverbs such asperformative, evaluative and modal adverbs are speaker-orientedadverbs and others are subject-oriented adverbs. The notion oforientation is very useful but it must be modified slightly (see Suzuki(1979) and “Ambiguity and Orientation of English Adverbs” in thisvolume (“Fukushi-no Aimaisei to Shikosei” in Japanese) and it canbe extended further to cover other kinds of adverbs: agentiveorientedadverbs, verbal-oriented adverbs, experiencer-oriented8Except subject adverbs which modify the subject of a sentence andpossibly performative adverbs which modify an unexpressed performativeverb or clause.50

Chapter ThreeOrientation and Licensing of English Adverbsadverbs, result-oriented adverbs, complement-oriented adverbs, etc.(Platt-Platt, 1972 and Lehrer, 1975). Extension of this notion seemspromising in that it can account for how adverbs work in sentences,in particular, which element an adverb "modifies" in a sentence. It isimportant to specify the association between adverbs and theelements which they modify in order to capture co-occurrencerestriction and to account for licensing of adverbs in sentences.The notion of scope has long been used in the study of adverbs,as mentioned above. Sentence adverbs and VP adverbs areconsidered to have scope over the whole sentence and VP,respectively. Given the wide variety of functions of adverbs, it willbe useful and helpful to extend and elaborate this notion along thelines suggested by Travis (1988) and Ernst (1998), to specify rigidlywhere (or in what phrase) particular adverbs work in sentencestructures; the more rigidly the scope of a particular adverb isspecified, the more specifically its function in the sentence can bedetermined. Such extension and elaboration of the notion scope willbe needed to distinguish two uses of the adverb quite, for example, inthe expressions such as a quite difficult problem and quite a difficultproblem; in the former case, the scope of quite is an adjective (but notan adjective phrase (AP), as suggested by Travis) while in the lattercase, the scope of quite is an NP. This distinction will also be helpfulfor capturing (lexical) properties of the adverb, such as the fact that itcan be used in such an expression as quite a party but not in *a quiteparty. Similar cases can be found in larger phrases or even entiresentences. Both the notions of orientation and scope are importantand useful for a study of adverbs. But orientation can be used tospecify the association between adverbs and the elements which theymodify (or are related to) while scope can be used to determine the51

egion or phrase (in any size, i.e., from a single word to an entireclause).Among the most important problems in explaining theproperties of adverbs is to account for the occurrence of adverbs insentences, including co-occurrence restriction. The first task forlicensing adverbs is to determine a scope of a particular occurrenceof an adverb in a sentence. It will delimit the region in which theadverb works properly, where its orientation and co-occurrencerestrictions can be captured. The second task is to specify theorientation of the adverb and the relation between it and the elementit is oriented to. Based on this relation, relevant co-occurrencerestrictions will be checked.Finally, let us consider the sentences in (15), where the adverbsadly is used, to see how these tasks can be done (Suzuki, 1997).(15) a. The old man was sitting on the bench sadly.b. Sadly, they were walking down the street.c. Sadly, our offer was rejected by the committee.The scope of sadly is the VP in (15a) but not the entire clause, which isdetermined by the structure and position in which it occurs. Itfollows that the determination of the scope of adverbs is subject tocertain conditions (Suzuki, 1995). Then, it will be decided that sadly isoriented to the VP was sitting on the bench. The relevant co-occurrencerestrictions are satisfied between sadly and the VP. Hence, thisoccurrence of sadly can be licensed. It is interesting to note that thescope of sadly can be both the subject and the entire clause in (15b)and (15c), owing to the position in which it appears. In the case of(15c), sadly can be licensed when it has scope over the entire clause,because it is compatible with the properties of the clause. However, it52

Chapter ThreeOrientation and Licensing of English Adverbscannot be licensed when it has scope over the subject, because in thiscase it is oriented to the subject and it does not satisfy theco-occurrence restriction to the effect that adverbs of this kind (i.e.,subject adverbs) require an animate subject NP. On the other hand,in the case of (15b), sadly can be licensed when it is oriented either tothe entire clause or the subject, satisfying every relevant requirement,although it seems preferable to interpret it as a subject-orientedadverb.53

ReferencesErnst, T. 1998. “The Scopal Basis of Adverb Licensing,” NELS 28,pp.127-142.Jackendoff, R. 1972. Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar.Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.Lehrer, A. 1975. “Complement-oriented adverbs,” Linguistic Inquiry 6,pp.489-94.Platt, J. and H. Platt. 1972. “Orientation of manner adverbials,” Papers inLinguistics 5, pp.227-49.Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik. 1972. A Grammar ofContemporary English. London: Longman._______ 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London:Longman.Suzuki, H. 1979. “Properties of subject adverbs,” (in Japanese) Studies inLanguages and Cultures 6, pp.15-39.________ 1983. “Modification and orientation of adverbs,” Tsukuba Review ofEnglish Studies 2, pp.69-81.________ 1995. “Toward an explanation of adverbs,” Tsukuba Review ofEnglish Studies 14, pp.33-47.________ 1997. “A note on adverbial-licensing mechanism,” ms. Universityof Tsukuba & MIT. [a slightly different Japanese version in TsukubaReview of English Studies 16, pp.37-48.]Travis, L. 1988. “The syntax of adverbs,” McGill Working Papers inLinguistics: Special Issue on Comparative Germanic Syntax. pp.280-310.54